Ridiculous Fines for Cellphone Use while Driving

Fines vary from $20 to $2000 – is this merely an extra money for the government to spend on new roads, or will it prevent people from using cellphones?

Photo from Stefan Kloo’s flickr

We all know your reaction time doesn’t improve when you use a cellphone while driving. If I were playing Angry Birds, I wouldn’t even see the other car coming.  But I could hold a navigation device in my hand all day while building a Lego tower, and not be fined. Even calling someone while riding a bike is no problem.

Calling would distract you from driving, and therefore be an offence. Research shows that older people react much slower than younger people (Green, 2009), and there is a dramatic increase  in reaction time between an 80 year old and a 20 year old man. Why then do we not forbid all old people to drive? They’re much more dangerous that young people calling.

Research also shows that handheld calling causes as many accidents as handsfree calling (Victor H., 2011). It doesn’t matter whether you hold your phone or not, you can’t pay as much attention to the road as you should. But when attention becomes the problem, we could also forbid music in cars. I personally find pink cars very distracting, let’s forbid those too.

Is there any way to forbid everything that causes distraction? No, but calling is a popular thing to do while driving, so when you forbid that. We might solve a big part of the problem. But then handsfree calling should be forbidden too. And Angry Birds. While we’re at it, let’s just ban all cellphone use from our lives. It is not possible.

Will the fine prevent you from calling while driving?

Sources:
Driver Reaction Time; Visual Expert
Using a Bluetooth hands-free while driving just as risky as using the handset, study finds; Phone Arena

Space Tourism: Out of this World

The requirements: good health, ludicrous loads of money and shots of bravery.

Photo from NASA

The adventure that history may think as fictional or delusional is now taking off with us. Space tourism is welcoming wealthy adventurers to go somewhere where not many has been and seen. Like what Virgin Galactic said, “space is a virgin territory”.

After a brief tease of the thrilling tour, people jumped aboard.  From 520 listed customers, £64M ($103M) is already in deposits. The first batch of flight will happen next year.  Among the early birds to space were known personalities – Hollywood’s Paris Hilton, Ashton Kutcher, Tom Hanks, Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt; scientists James Lovelock and Stephen Hawking; and royal Princess Beatrice. See Virgin Galactic passenger list.

A spaceplane can accommodate eight people. Two are pilots and six are passengers. Perhaps, among the six passengers was a photographer to keep track of the adventure. Virgin Galactic is excited to bring in the first batch of space tourists photos. With this mission of resolute publicity and marketing, it won’t be for long until they earned back their £162M ($261M) investment for the fleet of spaceplanes. In fact, the space industry has the potential to reach $1.6B in the next decade.

This growing industry also has growing competition. Orbital Technologies, a Russian company, plans to construct a “Hotel in the Heavens”.  No gravity is the gimmick of the hotel. The price to get there was £500,000 ($806,000) and £100,000 ($161,000) to stay for five nights. Space Adventures in Virginia will bring you to the International Space Station for $50M. Other companies offering the adventure are emerging in California and Texas while a European conference was held in London in the talks of space tourism.

How will it go? Everything will seem like a flash. 90 seconds to ascend with a speed of 4,000km/h. After six to seven minutes of gliding to the space engineless and gravityless, they’ll start descending. Tourists will appreciate a view similar to this:

We don’t know where it’s going from here. I guess there will be more men – ridiculously wealthy men – to step on the moon in the near future.

Would you travel in space?

Sources:
Space tourism: to infinity and beyond?; The Guardian
Space Tourism Is Here! Wealthy Adventurers Wanted; The New York Times

Made in China

Why is it we so distrust products made in China, or Japan?

Photo from Martin Abegglen’s flickr

For example cars. It isn’t cool to drive a Japanese car. Why? A Japanese car costs less, is more reliable, more innovative. Yet we don’t want those cars. A German car costs more, is less reliable, and looks like the German cars 20 years ago.

There are multiple explanations I can think of. A car is no more just a means of transportation; it is a symbol of status. The bigger your Mercedes, the richer you are. This is logical, we (yes, ‘we’, the cool guys from the western world) produce cars for the wealthy, they produce cars for transport. It is a different market, in which Japan conquers, who can afford a 50, 000 dollar Mercedes and who just needs a means of transport, a car that fits a parking spot.

The other explanation is that we are afraid for change. Which is logical too, we like the old-fashioned expensive cars. They worked 20 years ago, we can’t say that of a Japanese car. And a car produced in Germany or the US sounds safe. The world that we know. China is too far away.

But what if Mercedes suddenly lets its cars be produced in China, because of the low wages? It won’t keep us from buying them and this seems strange. As long as the brand is western, it doesn’t matter where it really comes from. An iPhone is made in China, yet we buy it. The Meizu, a mobile bigger, faster and better than an iPhone, doesn’t sell in the US. We like the Chinese wages, not the Chinese brand.

What is your honest opinion about products made in China?

Aviation Industry Secrets

An airline is accused of hacking a person’s email.

Photo from Yuichi Kosio’s flickr

Airplanes are the safest mode of transportation. In 2002, there were 6,316,000 car accidents in US alone, compare that to 339 near collisions between airlines. The safest seat you’ll be was in the back of the plane, having 40% more survival rate in case something unwelcome happened (based on Popular Mechanic’s study of plane crashes since 1971). That’s the dilemma, comfort was in the front, safety was in the back, where would you be?

AskMen.com named Iran Airlines, China Airlines, and Cubana Airlines as the most dangerous airlines in the world. Iran Airlines’s had three accidents in the last 10 years and its safety issues earned a banned status from European Union. China has high number of casualties, the latest it had was in 2002 where 225 lives were lost. Cubana Airlines has the lowest success flights between accidents.

The approximate starting salary of a pilot was $18,000 a year. A janitor’s salary was $21,000 while a New York taxi cab’s salary was $22,000. To get proper training, a pilot aspirant pays $40,000 to $50,000 in average and needs to pass three licenses. Captains earn gigantic if he had miraculous hours of flight.

Dr. Davis Stork said that the filth on airplanes are hazardous to health. Blankets and pillows are unwashed, tray tables are unsanitary and floors are soiled. Try not to touch anything or have a hand wash for your aid.

Kate Hanni sued Delta Air line Inc., accusing the company hacked emails from her computer. She is associated with FlightsRights.org where passengers voice out about the service of the airline. Whether it’s true or not, a company could go to the extreme to save their face, even to the point of privacy breach.

Order canned or bottled refreshments. EPA testing confirmed 13% of the tested aircraft contained coliform bacteria in their drinking water. The bacteria is found in the fecal matter.

The sky is not entirely clear space – birds can fly too! US Air Force reported 5,000 bird strikes in 2007 due to collision with aircrafts. Other than that, no one’s tracking how many birds were sacrificed for your flight.

What would you like to improve in airlines?

Sources:
Airline industry’s ‘dirty little secret’; CNN
Airlines’ dirty little secret; CBS
8 Terrifying Airline Secrets; MainStreet
Delta is Hacking E-mails?; MainStreet
Safest Seat on a Plane: PM Investigates
How to Survive a Crash; Popular Mechanics
How Much Does It Cost to Become a Pilot?; eHow
Car Accident Statistics; Lawcore
Top 10: Most Dangerous Airlines; AskMen.com